Lessons Learned
by allthoselittlemusings
Summary: Emily becomes Unit Chief and finds she doesn't handle JJ being out in the field very well. JJ handles being told what to do even worse. First chap is set around Elliott's Pond 12 x 6. F/F. Characters aren't mine, obviously.
1. Chapter 1

Small-town Delaware cornfields were like thousands of well-choreographed dancers. Emily watched them bend and sway as the cruiser maneuvered around potholes, thankful for a reprieve from her jumbled thoughts. As the light plane above them opened its landing gear and prepared to skim the single makeshift runway, Emily gave a fleeting nod of admiration to the stronger stalks on the perimeter as they stood resolute against the whirring of the propeller. They refused to be uprooted by the callousness of humans. She would try to do the same.

For the duration of the drive Spencer Reid had been wedged into the back seat as a buffer between JJ and a young Clayton officer with hungry eyes and a rash around his five'o'clock shadow. He'd spent the first fifteen minutes out of Wilmington sprouting facts about mental asylums and ghosts, none of which Emily had managed to retain among the struggle that was her constant compartmentalizing. Eventually, the Clayton Police Chief had picked up the feeble waves of a country music station and spent the remainder of the drive masterfully increasing the volume every couple of minutes, and Reid's voice had been drowned out by the occasional crowing of Hank Williams over the crackle of static.

JJ was first out of the vehicle and Emily couldn't blame her. The officer was scratching the flaking skin around his stubble with renewed vigor and smiling in her direction with one prominent rotting tooth. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five - scrawny and unkempt - out-of-his-depth but summoning every ounce of misguided confidence to hurry after JJ's quickening form across the runway.

 _You can't make this shit up_. Emily watched wryly as JJ tried to ignore the blonde strands whipping around her face from the slowing propeller, unaware that it increased her sex appeal ten-fold. Despite the proximity of Officer - _what was his name?_ \- JJ had stood as solid as the corn stalks, barely flinching, probably hoping beyond hope that the pilot - a fly-in from Dover - had located three boys among the pine forests. Emily could almost imagine them from the photos in the file - skinned knees or even broken bones - sheepish but very, very alive.

She hadn't even made it to the dying grass on the landing strip before the grim look on the pilot's face told her that they'd best settle into Clayton.

* * *

Off the 7, where the Henson twins has disappeared thirty years before, the peacefulness had been unnatural, _unnerving_ even. It was as if the town had wanted Emily to feel at ease with its hum of insects and sweet scent of maize crop and tractor diesel. It hadn't worked. The savagery of her job only caused her to second-guess the simple beauty in the world. Despite the warmth of the mid-morning Spring sun and the crisp country breeze, Emily had been unable to think of anything other than the horrors the boys were surely facing. Their lives had barely begun, and yet the chance of them being extinguished was far too real. Her thoughts had drifted to the parents at the station; to the aching despair they must have felt, and to the unendurable fear that was not knowing what had happened to your loved one.

With Reid preoccupied, Emily had bitten off her nails, simultaneously cursing the thought process that threatened every time to consume her. It was the single greatest kink in her armor; the biggest danger to her obsessive ability to compartmentalize. She would sympathize with the families, and then she would empathize, and then there was always that one step further, that special form of self-punishment that knotted her stomach and hastened her breathing, and left her an anxious mess of nausea and bleeding cuticles.

 _You remember that time that person who meant the most to you was gone, don't you Prentiss?_

Fuck, she remembered JJ's kidnapping with stinging clarity. She didn't need a cognitive exercise to recall the staleness of the room mixed with the stench of rotting human flesh and damp dog hide. She still felt JJ's frigid skin during nightmares and heard the same guttural cries of relief when they rescued another victim or put a bullet through another unsub. Since then, Emily had imagined scenarios that would have made that horrible day pale in comparison. She was certain they were borne partly from the brutality of her job, and partly from her ever-increasing affection for the younger blonde with those blue-green-gray eyes. In Emily's broken, butchered imagination the story would change, but the protagonist was always the same: Special Agent Jennifer Jareau.

Emily had been aware of the subtle shift in their relationship since she'd been back. From colleagues to friends to better friends. Or maybe better friends was just her smoke screen, her excuse for the countless hours she'd spent in frenzied agitation for JJ's well-being. Whatever it was, it existed, even if only in Emily's mind. It was there as Emily bent over JJ's chair to look at the laptop screen back at the station. It was there when her fingertips curled tightly around the plastic, reaching for, but not quite grazing the material of JJ's blazer. It was there when she accidentally inhaled too much of JJ's buttery shampoo, and had to step back. It was there.

* * *

By the afternoon the haze was thicker and the first cicadas had started up. Emily's eyes burned with sleep-deprivation while her head and its muddle of unprocessed thoughts threatened to betray her. Still, she pulled on the flak jacket mechanically. Like the corn stalks, she told herself, clipping her gun into her holster and tying back her ebony hair. Like the corn stalks she was bending with the circumstances, but not snapping.

The drive to Jimmy Ridley's house was uneventful, although the promise of uncovering the whereabouts of the boys made Emily impatient as Alvez skidded across the loose gravel of another unsealed country road. A hairpin bend, another cornfield, another hairpin bend. Emily had drummed her fingers on the dash until Alvez had demanded she stop, and so, with nothing else to think about, her thoughts had drifted back to the blonde in the car behind them.

* * *

When Emily thought about the exercise of finding Jimmy Ridley itself, there was nothing non-regulation. It wasn't as if her stint as Unit Chief could have been called over before it had begun. Still, she'd entered the house with an uncharacteristic trepidation, unable to put her finger on the reason for the dread that was causing the hairs on her arms to stand on end.

They'd drawn their weapons, cleared the living room, the dining room and then the hall - like they'd done so many dozens of times before. Emily had found the woven shrine of victim photos and personal effects first, and it had startled her appropriately - enough to signal to the team that this wasn't quite the innocent country cottage. Still, Emily had seen thousands more alarming things during her BAU stint. She had almost - _almost_ \- let the dread dissipate. There were no dead kids, but a hive of circumstantial evidence that they could pore through. Up until that point the whole exercise could have been considered at least partially successful, save for no sign of the missing boys.

The damned thing had only fallen apart at the clanging of metal from the kitchen.

 _Shit. There's something - someone - under the sink._ Emily couldn't remember who had cleared the kitchen. _If_ they'd cleared the kitchen. _Fuck._

They'd turned in unison, the four of them, weapons raised a little higher. JJ - fearless JJ - had been closest. And Emily - stupid Emily - had been the furthest. Before Emily could say anything; before she could muscle her way to the front of the group, or even think of how to reverse the roles so she could put herself appropriately in the firing line, JJ was in position. When she bent down to throw open the sink cabinet, Emily's savage imagination reared its head without warning, and the result had been a fear so primal and raw that it had almost caused her to discharge a full clip straight into Jimmy Ridley's goading grin.

 _Fuck you, you absolute waste of a fucking -_ Emily's finger went rigid over the trigger and for a split second she was paralysed by her own conscious. But then Ridley had laughed - that deep, diabolical laugh - with JJ still barely a half-metre away on her haunches, and something had burst forth from the depths of Emily; something she couldn't control. It had sent JJ sprawling back onto the grimy kitchen linoleum, willowy limbs splayed about her, and caused Emily to cuff Ridley so roughly that his mouth had twisted in torturous pain.

It was only then that Emily had concluded Ridley hadn't been an immediate threat - a realization that her team had come to much earlier. Reid had holstered his gun and Alvez had hauled Ridley up. JJ was collecting herself from the floor, unsure if Emily had seen something she hadn't, a glint of a weapon maybe? For Emily, no amount of relief had suppressed the scene her mind had constructed just moments prior, nor forced the bile back down her throat. In her twisted hallucination, Ridley had been cradling a shotgun; pump-action, double-barreled - one bullet easily through Reid and then another through JJ before Emily could even react. She had seen it so acutely, that, had she not been leaning against the kitchen counter, she was sure her legs would cave. As the chief led Ridley away and the team exhaled, Emily had kept holding her breath until her lungs screamed, afraid that the stinging tears would escape if she let go.

* * *

Outside their inn, on a hill off the main strip of Clayton, they was a swing hanging from an old maple tree. The rope was frayed and dirty and the singular branch had yielded to the weight of bodies over the years. Emily dared not sit on it, but little JJ, with her slighter frame, had no such reservations. She sat watching the sun, orange from the dust, melt and spread across the town as it descended.

Emily watched from the step outside her room, leaning against the splintered wooden railing, letting the drop in temperature cool her cheeks and settle her. She watched until she had to strain her eyes to see JJ's silhouette, wondering if she'd come in. She didn't, and so she'd watched some more, until the mist had started rolling across the cornfields. Then she had risen with a blazer in her hand, and crunched loudly over fresh pine needles to announce her presence.

"You okay?" the blazer was a peace offering - an apology for throwing the delicate blonde across the floor of a dirty kitchen. JJ said nothing about the incident, but she took Emily's too-big blazer graciously.

"Thanks"

"JJ? You okay? Emily asked the question again, suddenly feeling very exposed in the dark. She fought against a shiver, not wanting even a shred of vulnerability to creep in to the interaction.

"Yeah. I'm just..." JJ had paused to play with her lip and gulp back emotion. Although it was almost pitch black, Emily could see shining eyes and it gnawed at her capricious emotions. Had the tired, old branch been stronger, had the drilled wooden plank been longer, she might have sat down and crossed the line in the minute it took JJ to finish her sentence. "...I'm just thinking about my own boys. How do you even cope with the possibility of losing the most precious thing in your life, you know, Em?"

Emily had to shut her eyes, and this time the small shiver overwhelmed her. Her hand reached, unsure of whether to unfurl JJ's slight fingers from where they were curled around the fraying rope, or caress a wayward blonde wave. She needed something tangible to hold for a minute. Eventually her flexed fingers found JJ's slender shoulder under the bunched material of the jacket, tense with worry, and gave it a small squeeze of reassurance.

"I know, JJ"

Because boy, did she know.


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed to be a small-town curse, because for six weeks cases sprung up around D.C and Virginia and Emily managed to keep JJ out of a flak jacket. In that time, Emily had shot one unsub and written off another Bureau SUV in a high speed chase. Both times JJ had been safe within the confines of Garcia's office.

Of course there had been the reemergence of Floyd Feylinn Ferell and Emily, with copious amounts of guilt, had thanked whatever cosmic power had organised for Garcia to need that extra bit of care, because it was JJ who could give it. Emily had spent the nights in Florida speaking to JJ through a screen, and while she had ached for the little things - a JJ-smile through pristine pearly whites when she handed her a coffee, or the inevitable argument over how much chilli they would have in their shared stir-fry - the reassurance that JJ was home instead of hunting down a cannibalistic serial killer, was enough.

It was late-May when they were called to a tiny town in Maine, almost on the border. St Agatha looked like Spring had by-passed it completely; the trees had remained barren enough so that not so much as a squirrel seemed willing to climb the miserable trunks. The grass had hardly grown after the winter, and although Reid had rambled at length about the beauty of Long Lake, a low cloud-cover had obscured the entire surface of the water. By the time they got to the crime scene, the cloud-cover had opened up into blinding sleet and Emily shivered with trepidation from the moment she stepped out of the car.

" _Jesus. Fuck."_ She needn't have worried if Northern Maine law enforcement took blasphemy seriously because the belting rain drowned out any audible cursing from any of them. It took mere moments for the icy rain to soak through the thin denim of her jeans, and even less time for it to plaster her thick ebony locks to her cheeks, leaving Emily to ponder the cruel irony that was the rest of the country suffering through a late-Spring heatwave while she stood fighting tooth and nail to maintain some semblance of authority with blue lips and frigid fingers.

The weather had made sure that any hope of recovering additional forensic evidence was fanciful at best, and the bodies were so badly decomposed that Emily felt they could have avoided the crime scene altogether if it hadn't been for the fact that each corpse had been carefully separated at the torso. Mottled, slippery flesh hung from protruding bones, hollow eye sockets held small wells of water. Emily's stomach lurched as she willed herself against imagining any of them alive, especially since she could just make out the matted remains of fine, flaxen hair.

It had been six weeks since Clayton, and Emily's nightmares had only increased in their magnitude and frequency, leaving her racked with both a paralysing fear and debilitating fatigue. Physically, she was in agony. Mentally, she had never been more vulnerable. When Rossi had made a passing comment on the jet about her drooping eyelids, she'd joked about the paperwork he'd graciously bestowed on her by passing up the Unit Chief position. He'd seemed to buy it, but even then, the effort it took to merely lie in the company of profilers threatened to undo her. She was sure that the only thing that had kept her intricate facade from crumbling was the sight of JJ resting against the window opposite her; peaceful, _safe._

Emily would have liked to stay in that bubble forever; warm and dry, with the steady hum of the jet engine and JJ's company lulling her. Of course, it was not to be, because JJ had just exited a second SUV and was moving towards the crime scene as fast as she could while shielding her face against the belting rain. Emily felt the familiar anxiety rise in her chest. JJ was so ethereal and it seemed wrong to allow her into the mere vicinity of the dismembered corpses in the shallow ditch ahead. Without even so much as a brief assessment of the potential consequences, or what she would say to explain, Emily threw a hand out as as JJ passed, curling numb fingers around a skinny wrist, not quite pulling her back but certainly preventing any further forward movement.

 _Don't look, Jayje. Please don't look._

"Emily, what?" JJ was confused and Emily regretted the action instantly. Her skin was positively glacial, and it threw Emily into a sudden, paralysing flashback. _JJ in chains, shivering and beaten bloody._

"JJ, I want you to go back to the station... to..do...um..."

The rain was so dense that Emily couldn't see more than a few inches in front of her, but she could still imagine the expression on JJ's face; head cocked, eyebrows raised, searching for a reason. She'd just travelled out there, spent a good half an hour crawling along slippery, decaying roads and now Emily wanted her to return to the station? Unable to find the rationale, she folded her arms in front of her.

"Emily, why don't I just have a look around here? There's..." realising that the storm was drowning her out, JJ raised her voice "Nothing for me to do there".

"No, take Spencer, have the Police Chief pull up missing persons in the area for the last 15 years"

"Garcia's done that already, Em" JJ stood rooted where she was, and Emily cursed. She should have known that the agent would be stir-crazy after missing a chance to have a go at Ferrell. Emily had to close her eyes at the frustration that was JJ's logical insubordination.

"The photos should be back, go and have a look at those. You won't have to stand out here in the storm"

"You're standing out here in the storm"

Emily had never expected JJ to take no for an answer. There wasn't a shred of submission in any molecule of her DNA. Still, she'd had to reconcile that this was the same baby-faced blonde who had so shyly interrupted her first meeting in Hotch's office all those years ago. She'd left JJ one day at a cafe in Paris with tears in her young eyes, and a lip wobble to melt the hardest of hearts, and come back to a woman with a shrewd glare and a sharper tongue.

Some things hadn't changed. JJ's baby-face had gone, but she was still the most beautiful being Emily had ever seen. She still had a habit of perching herself on whatever desk Emily seemed to find herself at, or leaning over so far in a v-neck that Emily could count every freckle that dotted the translucent skin on her upper chest. Emily, of course, still had a habit of staring too long and too hard, and the sight of JJ doused in the elements proved no exception.

"Emily, why do I have to go back to the station?" JJ enquired again, and Emily found herself suddenly unable to come up another excuse. _Why? Because those women in that ditch were once beautiful blondes too, Jayje. Maybe that had your swagger, maybe their skin was perfect ivory, maybe they owned all the men at darts and made women fall completely in love with them. Why do you have to go back to the station? Because I'm fucking crazy about you, and it terrifies me, Jennifer Jareau. That's why._ There were so many reasons, and Emily could speak none of them aloud. The weight of angst and soaked clothing, coupled with the sudden fear that JJ was picking her apart, sent her muddled brain into a fog. She desperately wanted to cry, scream, anything to release the tension that had immobilized her for a moment.

Then the catharsis came with a snap.

"Jesus JJ, just... just stop _FUCKING_ arguing, okay? Just _stop"_ Emily yelled over the rumbling of thunder, unconcerned by the proximity of the Aroostook County officers who had looked up in surprise _"Just get the hell out of here okay. Just get the hell out"._

The sheer frenzy in her voice worried even her. It was so foreign to hear herself angry, and so far removed from the even, authoritative tone that she prided herself on. She was just about to soften in sympathy for JJ, when, without a word, but with unmistakable daggers in her crystal blue eyes, the blonde turned on her heel and was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

If Emily had thought that day had started terribly, it was nothing compared to how it ended.

While JJ languished in the tiny St Agatha Police Station, bored and angry, Emily had taken a tip from the local Sheriff about a hermit living by himself on the wooded outskirts of Long Lake. With Lewis and Alvez at the morgue, and Reid and Rossi visiting the parents of the only woman reported missing in the greater Long Lake area that decade, she found herself steering a borrowed SUV through the storm alone. She had told herself it was routine. The Sheriff had said he was 'harmless' and she wouldn't stay long. It didn't make sense to wait for Lewis and Alvez to finish with the Medical Examiner, or to cut Reid and Rossi's visit short.

The result had been that, when the clock ticked over to 10pm, Emily lay in a lonely Northern Maine hospital bed with no less than eight stitches in her forehead. She'd taken it on the chin as best she could, after all, she had broken the first rule of the FBI manual; _never go anywhere alone._ Still, the haze she encountered when she tried to recall what had happened maddened her. Had she slipped and fallen in the woods? Or had a two-by-four and an angry unsub caused the split above her left eye?

The last thing she remembered with any certainty was struggling up a muddy embankment against pounding rain. Had she found the cabin? She vaguely recalled corroding iron sheets cobbled messily together - but then there was nothing but a blank space, and it upset her more than it should have. Maybe it was because she liked to be in control, or maybe it was because everything else that had happened that day was crystal clear. There was no blank space when it came to the decomposing bodies, the smell of damp, rotting wood, or JJ's expression full of indiscreet fury and betrayal.

The Sheriff had found her once she didn't return to the station. By then the team had been notified that she was missing. Rossi and Reid had beaten her to the hospital, and sat as a nurse gently extracted splintered wood from her hairline.

"If it was the unsub, why didn't he kill you?" Reid had been ever inquiring, using his intelligence to shield his concern. Emily wished he wouldn't. Her insides burned with the humiliation of blatant failure, and Reid's questioning did nothing to extinguish her shame.

Lewis and Alvez appeared next, just as Emily was lamenting the fact that the injury was nowhere near bad enough to have knocked her out for the night. She was sore, but not sore enough to let the painkillers send her to sleep. Lewis had shaken her head in mock disapproval, but had let Emily off the hook when her eyelids had drooped a little lower. Alvez had made a few notes.

"Your toothbrush is in the side pocket" was the last thing Lewis said as she disappeared behind the hospital curtain.

There was no mention of JJ and Emily felt her absence like a knife into her heart.

* * *

Once she could fight sleep no longer, the nightmares came with a vengeance.

Emily had tried to keep a record of how many times she'd had that same dream. The image of JJ on that dirty mattress, choking on her own blood, would, without fail, be the last thing her subconscious imparted on her before she woke on the cusp of pure hysteria, face and neck wet with sweat and tears, begging the night and its invisible predators to have mercy. Sometimes it took minutes and sometimes hours, but when lucidity inevitably returned, she would pick up the antique letter opener on her bedside table and carve another line into the bedpost.

In the early hours of the morning when Emily woke, there was no mahogany bedpost to carve a line into. Instead, the hospital bed groaned under the sudden movement, and when she shouted it was to white walls and blue fluorescent tubes.

 _God damn it, Emily._

She knew she had alerted the nurses, which was probably fortunate because her wound was bleeding again. Still, half-caught in the panic of the nightmare, and adjusting to the unfamiliarity of her surroundings, the flurry outside the curtains alarmed her. Emily felt a tug of something that felt like homesickness. She'd made it all the way up to an FBI Unit Chief, and yet, after a bad dream, she only wanted her team.

 _Karma, I'm sure._

It seemed almost poetic that she should be so miserable and alone in a hospital, without the only people who could make her feel safe. It was the reward for gutlessness and she deserved what she got. Emily closed her eyes and prepared her excuses as the curtains ruffled again and hushed voices exchanged inaudible words.

 _Sorry, I had a bad dream. Yes, I know I'm forty-five. No, I'm fine._

The night nurse was small, overweight and motherly and she fussed over the busted stitches and the twisted sheets as if Emily was a disobedient child. Emily found she brought a warmth to the lifeless room despite the monotonous beeping and stench of disinfectant, and when she scrubbed the blood from Emily's face it was with a tenderness that she hadn't felt for a while, and one that she suddenly yearned for.

"Will there be someone here to collect you in the morning?" she'd asked, once the doctor has left, and Emily had felt a sadness so acute she'd had to look away from the nurse's kind face. The last time this had happened she'd found JJ curled up in the plastic chair by the bed. The time before that JJ had fallen asleep in the waiting room with blonde strands splayed out around her. Both times she'd led Emily out with a protective arm around her shoulders. Both times, just before they'd walked back through the doors of the BAU, JJ had taken Emily aside and asked if she was alright - really alright. And no matter what Emily had said, whether she'd lied through her teeth, or conceded she could have been better, JJ had kept her secrets.

"Ms Prentiss?" The nurse had picked up on her hurt, she knew. Still, the memories had ignited a small spark of hope in her. It seemed too much, but she asked anyway.

"Was there a blonde woman in here at all. An FBI Agent?" For the second time that day, she didn't recognize her own voice. It was vulnerable, barely above a whisper. The nurse adjusted her pillow once more before she turned to leave.

"No, love. There's been no one in here all night"


	4. Chapter 4

Emily was back in the station by midday and had been briefed by half past.

The news wasn't good. The rain hadn't relented and the crime scene had been destroyed. Emily could do nothing but wait; for forensics, for another suspect, for JJ to speak to her. Too concussed to be in the field and with her head threatening to split apart from the slightest movement, Emily took to staring at the same macabre pictures scattered across the break room table.

It was dark by the time JJ appeared in the doorway, a manila folder in her hand, looking every bit JJ; soft and beautiful and determined. Emily briefly thought she might have killed two birds with one stone; forensics _and_ an opportunity to apologize to the blonde.

"Jayje, please tell me they're positive dental records?"

JJ bit her lip in response. It was the first indication that she was unsure. The second was that she seemed frozen in the doorway; as if her next move could either make or break the encounter. To JJ's credit, the anger had seemed to dissipate, but Emily nonetheless found dread eclipsing relief.

"Actually" JJ's voice was barely audible over the drumming of rain on the windows "It's my resignation"

The words came like a punch in the stomach; whether it was the concussion, or the medication, or simply the thought of carrying on without JJ, Emily was all too quickly choking back a wave of nausea. For every awful scenario she'd ever created around JJ, none had involved a resignation.

"JJ... I"

"I was going to give it to you back in DC, but... If I don't do it now I never will" the smile was wry, woeful. JJ offered the folder up with reluctance.

"JJ, why?" Emily's tried to focus on anything else; the wall, the floor, the crime scene photos - anything to avoid having to take the folder that JJ was holding out. She wouldn't do this. She _couldn't._ In fact, she could do nothing but stutter in a pathetic panic.

 _"_..why would you...why...please?"

It was the wrong thing to say; the wrong way to beg. JJ had never been one to shy away from conversation and before she could take back the words, JJ had transformed. She threw the folder into Emily's lap in frustration before unleashing with a diatribe;

"Why? _Why? Because we were friends, Emily_. You held my hand in labour, you disarmed a _bomb_ strapped to my husband. And... " her voice caught for a split second before it resumed its bitter tirade "I lied for you, to my friends, to my family. You were a profiler before I even thought about being one. I looked up to you every single _fucking_ day. And now... _now_ you don't trust me. After everything we've been through, suddenly you're the boss and I'm a liability. This team is built on _trust,_ Emily, and if you don't _trust_ me to be out in the field then... Emily... Em?"

Emily had every intention of remaining steadfast while JJ unloaded. She wasn't the sort to evade culpability by breaking down. But then, she was injured; injured and lacking that tiny extra bit of resilience that came with a good night's sleep. Broken and exhausted, resilience eluded her, and before JJ could finish she was crying; hard enough so that the tears trailed from her flushed face and hit the open folder on her lap. One after another in quick succession, they speckled JJ's resignation letter with flecks of ink and salt.

"Oh, Emily" JJ had moved for the blinds first, knowing that Emily would be more than mortified. Next she tugged the folder from Emily's hands, feeling guilty enough to tear it up, unsure of whether she'd ever really wanted to resign, or whether she'd wanted a fight; or simply an _explanation_. Either way, it had gone too far. There was nothing trivial about Emily losing the battle with her fractured emotions.

Her state was so unfamiliar that JJ found herself at odds with what to do. Sometimes she had seen storms brewing in those wide, chestnut eyes, but they were always over before they had even really begun. Sometimes she had seen the subtle muscles on Emily's pale swan-neck constrict with emotion or even a tear or two escape confinement, but those moments had been few and far between. To JJ, Agent Emily Prentiss was all stoicism and grit and could regain control of even the most dangerous emotions with a hard bite of her lower lip. She had long resigned herself to the fact that Emily's practice of insulating herself against her feelings was so ingrained that their friendship would never be the cry-on-each-other's-shoulders kind.

She briefly thought about calling Garcia; perhaps it was the analyst's affection that Emily needed - the right mix of comedy and warmth and pet names. But then, she found she didn't really want Garcia on the phone; she didn't want anyone else there intruding on this private moment. She was strangely, inexplicably touched by Emily's raw display, even if she'd caused it.

JJ let her fingertips skim a shuddering shoulder in an attempt to initiate contact, but withdrew quickly when Emily visibly tensed. It was a precarious situation. Too much contact and Emily would be spooked, too little and JJ could lose her completely off the precipice she was so feebly hanging to. For a good few minutes, she did nothing but hover tentatively over the chair as Emily's tears fell onto her lap, paralyzed by the internal quarreling.

Inaction became impossible once Emily emitted a tiny squeak, because now she was no longer just crying, but properly sobbing. The renewed emotion shifted something in JJ; whether it was her maternal inability to leave a crying child, or the heartrending image of the unflappable Emily Prentiss batting desperately at her running nose under a shield of raven hair, something shifted.

"Come here you" she whispered, prying Emily's hands from her cheeks, and guiding her face to her stomach. She had still wanted to be angry, frustrated, but it was near impossible given Emily's utter misery. Once nestled between JJ's torso and the crook of her forearm, any resolve Emily had left melted away. Terrified that it would all end like one of her nightmares, her hand crept up to grip at a cotton blouse, and JJ watched as fingers, raw and bloody, anchored themselves to the slack in her shirt. Encouraged by the slow, sure sign that Emily was glad for her presence in such a vulnerable moment, she held Emily a little tighter in response.

* * *

It felt like hours that JJ stood resolute at Emily's side, cradling a head of sooty hair while she bawled, her body shaking with the strength of Emily's sobbing. She could feel Emily's nose pressing firmly into her, almost at belly-button height, and wondered with the slightest amusement just how much dried mucus she'd be peeling from her blouse at the end of the night. Emily had barely regained a shred of composure, despite JJ's rhythmic patting and the nails that must have combed through the thick hair on her scalp a thousand times. JJ savored the physicality. She had once been all empathetic expressions, and kind, but cliched words of assurance. Since becoming a mother, words had been replaced with gestures of tenderness; a kiss on the crown of her crying child, a gentle pad of a thumb on a cheek wiping away tears. Now here, with Emily, is seemed appropriate to do the same.

"It's okay, it's okay now Em" the whispered words became a mantra. Over and over she repeated them until the violent sobs turned to small vibrations that JJ could only assume were exhausted hiccups. When finally there was a moment of composure; of quiet, JJ spoke:

"'Are you gonna look at me?" she asked softly and Emily thought her voice sounded like honey and safety. She chanced a timid look up, still fused to JJ's middle, and found the blonde gazing upon her without apology. The first thing JJ noticed was how young Emily looked with moisture still clinging thickly to the crests of her chiseled cheekbones. The liner, which usually set her dark irises against neat frames of black, was speckled down her cheeks. Her long lashes, salty and stiff, had dried together in clumps and her bottom lip wobbled with residual emotion.

To JJ, Agent Emily Prentiss had never looked more beautiful.

Still cradling Emily with one arm, JJ reached out to touch the bandage, unprepared for the level of hurt it caused to realize that she hadn't been there - not for any of it; not even for the parts she should have been. While Emily had lay lonely and miserable in an unfamiliar hospital bed, she'd been furiously typing away at her resignation letter, carefully constructing every word so as to cause maximum damage. It appeared she'd succeeded.

"What's got into you, Em? What's all this?" JJ had started to pull back, giving Emily room to breathe, and giving herself the chance to look at Emily unimpeded. The panic that flitted across Emily's face stopped her.

"I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart" JJ reassured quickly, willing Emily to relax, unsure if she could coax her back from the brink a second time. .

Emily did try to counter the display of overt clinginess by releasing her death grip on JJ's blouse. Unsurprisingly, the thin blue button-up had the predictable amount of snot and tears on it, with most of Emily's shed eyeliner smudged into the creases.

"Oh, JJ. Your shirt - I..."

"No, no apologies. No more" JJ couldn't imagine anything she cared less about in the world in that moment than her shirt. She was feeling the loss of the contact with Emily more than she wanted to admit, and if the woman hiccoughed one more time, there was a chance she would just pull her back in and refuse to let her go.

"How specific is the resignation letter? Can we just substitute your name for mine?" There it was, that dry humour. Emily was coming back, bit by bit. JJ couldn't even scold her for the remark as she sat there pitifully scrubbing at her eyes.

"The only thing you're doing is coming back to the motel with me, boss" JJ made sure her voice held just the right amount of firmness and love. Tomorrow, there would probably be no mention of any of it -not the resignation that wasn't, or the tears, or JJ's snot-stained blouse. The clock had yet to tick over to midnight though, and that night in the dimly lit break room, with the rain still lashing at the windows, JJ offered her hand to Emily, and Emily accepted with both of hers, letting JJ take the lead on this one.


End file.
